This is really getting ridiculous. The other day, Virginia Republicans were busy honoring Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson. Today, it’s another Confederate General, this time Robert E. Lee. I’ll post video shortly of Virginia Republican Senators Richard Stuart and Tommy Norment extolling Lee and asking that the Senate be adjourned in his memory. For now, though, here’s a photo of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax, Virginia’s only statewide elected African-American, sitting down instead of presiding over the Senate as he normally does, because he left the dais in protest of the honor to the top general in the fight to continue slavery indefinitely (although Sen. Stuart ahistorically and bizarrely denied that the war was about slavery). Thank you to Justin Fairfax for his moral leadership, and shame on Republicans for this continued nonsense in the year 2018.

P.S. Stuart said, “Robert E. Lee and his fellow Virginians did not go to war to preserve slavery. Virginia’s secession convention voted twice against secession, until Abraham Lincoln called on states to send men to form a force to march across Virginia to invade the seceded states….Then and only then did Virginia choose the route of secession…”

I suspect the Republicans are doing this, not to “honor” Lee, but to embarrass Lt Gov Fairfax. What do you bet they pull this shit every day of the legislative session?

Anthony Shifflett

Possible. Need to know the history of this thing. Do they do this every year?

Harry

Senators Norment and Stuart, the war was soley about the institution of slavery. BTW, Stuart represents a portion of Prince William County, when asked to attend an event in the county his legislative aid advised that “…Senator Stuart is a family man and could never make it to PWC…he’d be away from his family too long…” Is this guy nuts?

Joseph George

We can arrange for him to spend more time with his family by voting him out, since he doesn’t seem interested in visiting his constituents. Win-win for all involved.

Anthony Shifflett

Give it another 10 years or so and even the Republicans won’t be saying this crap.

frankoanderson

As written in Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession, 1861:

“The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution…having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury
and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers
not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression
of the Southern slave-holding States…”

isn’t it funny how those that scream the most about “remembering history” never seem to honor Thomas, or the other southern Unionists…

Boronx

From the link.

The greatest efforts made by the defeated insurgents since
the close of the war have been to promulgate the idea that the cause of
liberty, justice, humanity, equality, and all the calendar of the
virtues of freedom, suffered violence and wrong when the effort for
southern independence failed. This is, of course, intended as a species
of political cant, whereby the crime of treason might be covered with a
counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the
rebellion might go down in history hand in hand with the defenders of
the government, thus wiping out with their own hands their own stains; a
species of self-forgiveness amazing in its effrontery, when it is
considered that life and property—justly forfeited by the laws of the
country, of war, and of nations, through the magnanimity of the
government and people—was not exacted from them.
— George Henry Thomas, November 1868.

2019 is the year, the party of old white men will be on the outside looking in. In the 2020 session, no Rs on any committee, let them sit in the audience and observe, do not recognize them on the house or senate floor, let them sit there and observe. Redistrict them to 12 House seats and 8 Senate seats.

RobertColgan

Ohhhhhh….well.
It had NOTHING to do with slavery.
That’s good to hear.
Must have been some other South-North conflict I had it confused with….

Glad also to hear the Civil War (156 years ago) is not only alive and well in Virginia politics, but carefully maintained by legislators to keep that old wound as free from noisesome and darkening putrescence as possible.